by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, June 4, 2021.
Earlier this week there was a small pickup truck parked in front of the Exeter Historical Society. The rear tire was precariously balanced on top of the granite curb due to a parallel parking mishap. We’ve all been there. Yet even though the situation looked pretty dire, the truck would be able to drive home relatively unscathed thanks to the technology involved in modern tire design. Modern tires are more rugged than their ancestors.
In 1918, there were few cars on Exeter’s roads. When Nathaniel and Theodora Burleigh decided to drive their new machine from New Haven, Connecticut to visit Theodora’s Exeter family, it was a monumental trip of 182 miles. That they brought along their 22-month-old baby, Barbara, made the trip even more extraordinary. Three days later, Nat asked his sister-in-law, Helen Tufts, if she’d like to go along with him to Franklin to pick up his mother. Twenty-one-year-old Helen, whom everyone called ‘Betty’, was game for the trip. Thanks to her diary, we can get a picture of just what this kind of early road trip was like.
Betty was up early to tend her victory garden. The United States had joined the Great War in April and on this day, in September, most of Betty’s produce was ready for harvest. She picked some corn and beans, watered the rest and then she and Nat set off for Franklin just after 9 o’clock. “When we reached Epping Square we found we’d lost the horn, so we came back to where we’d blown it last (about 2 mi out of Exeter) but didn’t find it.” New Hampshire state law had been writing traffic laws piecemeal since cars began to take over the roadways. In 1915, the law read that, “the operator of a motor vehicle approaching any intersecting way shall give timely signal” with either a bell or horn. They simply could not continue the journey without a horn. They decided to head back to Epping where Nat had a cousin. “Had a blow out where we started back toward Epping,” she noted. Betty, who was a sturdy type, would have easily helped change the tire but, “as Nat began to fix it, it began to pour. He got soaked and I got damp too as the rain blew so.” Betty, in her dressy clothes, retreated into the safety of the car and stoically picked up her knitting. They made it to Nat’s cousin shortly after that.
“We went to his cousins’ and he mended an old Ford horn of theirs and fixed another spare tire, then he telephoned his mother to meet us in Concord.” They would not be driving to Franklin. Nat’s mother, Nannie Burleigh, would take the train. “We got sandwiches in Manchester and went through the most awful detour, mud up to the hubs like chocolate pudding. Pretty soon the engine stopped & Nat discovered that the feed-pipe was broken – a metal pipe.” Still soaking wet, Nat went under the car – in the mud ‘like chocolate pudding’- and “he mended it with tape and string.” They had an advantage over other travelers: Nat was an engineer. He was currently employed at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in New Haven, a position that relieved him of any military service, for which the family was grateful. With the feed-pipe temporarily fixed, they sped away to Concord.
“Got to Concord just in time to see the train pull out that they were probably on, so we chased back to Manchester, through the detour again, but didn’t find them. We waited 10 min till another train came. Then Nat telephoned and found that they hadn’t started out at all!” It seemed Nannie decided to wait until tomorrow. The two climbed back into the car headed home. “Had another flat tire in Raymond. Home at 6:30.” In nine hours, they’d traveled from Exeter to Epping, back to Exeter, back to Epping, to Manchester then Concord, to Raymond and, finally, back to Exeter.
Yet Betty never grouses about the trip in her diary. If anything, she still seemed drawn to the allure of the automobile. Four years later, her father was on the campaign trail running for state senate. One afternoon, he, Betty and Effie, his wife, went for a drive in a sparkling new car. On May 21st, 1922 she wrote, “Father bought the Chevrolet sedan! Father, Mother, Ruth and I went to ride in the Chevrolet with Albert Wetherell. Gone 3 hours, fine ride and a dear little car.” It was decided that 25-year-old Betty would become the designated driver. The very next day she was out practice driving with Henry Grant, a local chauffeur who also worked at Wetherell’s garage. Just nine days later she took her driving test. “Answered several questions on paper, then Mr. Wetherell took the car out of the garage for me and I drove him up Court Street, through Pine and down Front to the garage.” After that, Betty drove everywhere. They kept the car at Wetherell’s until she mastered backing it into their own barn. She picked up the family cook each morning, ferried her father to and from the train station and to his many campaign events. He picked up driving eventually, but Betty did the bulk of the family errands. The Tufts family had entered the modern age.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: Advertisement for Wetherell’s Garage, 1922.